Chicago's Political Players

But barring any serious revelations about his role in the scandal, Alexander Russo of the District 299 blog says Duncan is probably in the clear.

"Unless they slam him for expanding principal discretion in February 2008 or for things that happened that first year," Russo writes. "Everyone else might be in deep doo-doo, however."

Team Obama

Russo surmises that the feds are "looking for bribery, corruption, fraud types of things, not violations of civil rights or disparate impact types of issues."

In other words: criminal violations; the kind that can send folks to the pokey.

School board president and mayoral pal Michael Scott, may not fare so well. He is already being questioned about how some students are chosen for admission to Chicago's elite high schools. Federal subpoenas were issued and Scott has been asked to appear before a grand jury.

"When he appears, he should have handy a list of students principals admitted and rejected to Chicago Public Schools elite selective enrollment schools," WBEZ's City Room blog notes.

Part of the focus is on the so-called "principal picks" that gave discretion to admit students to selective schools who otherwise fell outside the standard criteria for entry.

Sources told the Sun-Times last week "that Scott personally helped put a halt to a questionable principal pick at storied Whitney Young Magnet High after learning it involved the relative of his long-time aide, Greg Minniefield, Scott's $90,000-a-year 'special assistant.'"

That's likely to be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

"It's pretty clear to me that this one has legs," Greg Hinz writes. "It goes way, way up into Chicago's power structure. And it will be stinky, maybe very stinky."